


our greatest glory is not in never falling (but in rising every time we fall)

by LostOnMyRoad



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Batman And Robin - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, and realize you don’t remember which life you are living, and which parts are based on somebody’s expectations, dick's having a minor identity crisis, dick’s romani heritage, even if you weren’t actually dead, healing in a very roundabout way, is it nightwing’s?, is it richard grayson’s?, is it robin’s?, orphans and lost souls, returning from the dead is hard, some unholy amalgamation of them all?, the sinking feeling when you wake up, to the surprise of absolutely no one, who are you really when you don’t know which parts of yourself you created
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:47:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOnMyRoad/pseuds/LostOnMyRoad
Summary: But you are the golden boy, his mind whispers. The eldest son, the backbone, the example, the sacrifice. There was a time he loved it. He loves it still, but only in the brief flashes where he jumps off rooftops and feels the circus and robin sing in his blood.What is it, he wonders, that makes people look at him and think that he is something to be possessed. You were supposed to be Talon. You were supposed to stay Robin. You belong to Batman. You belong to Spyral. You belong to the Titans. You belong to the Court. You do not belong to yourself. You belong to everyone but yourself.He isn’t afraid of falling. He’s afraid of landing. Cracking his head against the concrete, not getting back up. Blood spilling over the pavement, spilling over the circus grounds. He’s fallen before, but he never feels afraid until he hits the ground.
Relationships: Barbara Gordon & Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne
Comments: 21
Kudos: 150





	1. with my needle and thread, i'll make the shroud

**Author's Note:**

> this work began sometime in 2018 and never really got off the ground until now, when I found it in an untitled google doc, waiting to be polished.
> 
> poor nightwing, he gets jerked around comic after comic, someone give him a break
> 
> apologies if the romani translations are wrong, please let me know if you know!

He’s tired. And that’s the problem, really. All his current problems could be narrowed down to those two words: I’m tired. But you are the golden boy, his mind whispers. The eldest son, the backbone, the example, the sacrifice. There was a time he loved it. He loves it still, but only in the brief flashes where he jumps off rooftops and feels the circus and robin sing in his blood.

He’s tired of being the backbone. He’s tired of being used. What is it, he wonders, that makes people look at him and think that he is something to be possessed. You were supposed to be Talon. You were supposed to stay Robin. You belong to Batman. You belong to Spyral. You belong to the Titans. You belong to the Court. You do not belong to yourself. You belong to everyone but yourself.

He isn’t afraid of falling. He’s afraid of landing. Cracking his head against the concrete, not getting back up. Blood spilling over the pavement, spilling over the circus grounds. He’s fallen before, but he never feels afraid until he hits the ground.

He’s running on fumes, and he knows the landing is near, but nobody’s going to catch him.

(He’s on the trapeze without a partner.)

You’re being dramatic, some part of him says. He contemplates that.

Barbara doesn’t call it a downward spiral, but that’s how he thinks of it. She never outright states that something is wrong, but he can read her looks by now. She has that same look on her face she had when he came back from the dead. Not quite disappointed, but uncertain and hurting underneath. They stay up until the late hours of the night playing cards and talking, but she never brings it up. When he leaves, however, she always squeezes his hand tight, like she’s physically trying to remind him that she’s there.

He keeps going. He’s managing this family. Nothing (emotionally or literally) explodes.

\----

Returning from the dead is hard, even if he wasn’t actually dead. Well, maybe for a minute there, when his heart stopped beating and everything went gray and murky and he was gone and--

It’s easier to pretend that minute never happened. 

Either way he’s alive now, in the literal sense and in a more metaphorical sense--Richard Grayson is at Wayne manor once more, and is once again Nightwing. 

But sometimes he wakes up unsure of which life he’s living--which master he’s serving, how many lies he is using as a shield, or maybe even a shroud. Is it Bruce? Helena? 

The walls of his room in the manor remind him that he is Richard Grayson again, Nightwing, and if he doesn’t belong to himself at least he belongs to Batman and to Robins. 

They had forgiven him, for the deception and fake funeral.

 _Phaori si duje xulajenqe te keres buti,_ his mother says in his memory, pushing back his hair from his forehead. 

(Nobody can serve two masters.)

She’d just finished wrapping up a story, a fable of sorts, in the small time they had before it was time to begin packing in earnest for the next town. He can no longer remember the exact color of her eyes, or the way her hair framed her face, but he does remember the press of warmth against his face, and the smile she had as she spoke, an unconscious little thing that almost never left except when he was stubborn and prideful and refused to listen to her.

He turns the words over in his mind, shifting under the blankets that suddenly feel constricting and tight. He doesn’t know how to return to this life, when everything feels fake and wrong and twisted. Nobody else seems to know what to do with him either. 

\----

After his ‘revival’, Jason and him have reached an agreement of sorts.

He stumbles into the kitchen one night, hand pressed to his side to stop the bleeding. Alfred’s going to kill him when he sees the blood on the floor, but right now Dick has more pressing concerns. Pressing, ha. You need to press to stop the bleeding. He should sleep, because his sense of humor is becoming as bad as Jason’s.

Speaking of Jason, he’s sitting at the counter, sandwich in hand, staring at Dick. He looks less angry now.

( _You don’t do that to another Robin--)_

“I thought there was a rule about having costumes in the manor.”

Dick just halfheartedly gestures at Jason, who’s still very much in Red Hood gear, helmet on the counter.

Jason snorts. “Point taken.”

Then he slides out of his seat and does a double take when he sees the blood drying on Dick’s chest.

“That better not be your blood,” he says, eyebrows raised. “Because they are going to assume I killed you.”

Has he already mentioned Jason’s terrible sense of humor? Also, he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t. Like 40% sure. Make that 30%. Jason’s been pretty good about toning down the crazy lately. Pretty good, as in, there have been no Red hood-injured robins for the past six months.

Dick shrugs and winces when it pulls at the gash. Jason’s face has gone a bit blank, which surprises him. 

“It is yours,” he half-whispers, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Dick doesn’t shrug this time, it hurts too much. He just stares back. He doesn’t really know why Red Hood is here. Jason doesn’t normally show up at the manor unless something huge is happening in Gotham’s underworld. Sometimes he comes by just to mess with the younger robins. Sometimes he comes by to mess with Dick. If it’s not criminally related its usually to spite Bruce.

“You know, Dickie Bird, normally I’m the one who breaks house rules,” Jason continues, breaking Dick’s train of thought. “And it would be nice if you could _stop almost dying.”_ He says that last part rather angrily, and Dick wonders if he’ll hold his mouth and nose closed like Luthor and just finish it, stop him from being a disappointment by just ending it all. “Normally I could care less about you biting the dust, but I get the feeling replacement would blame it on me.”

He’s coming closer, and part of him wants to retreat. Except that’s stupid, because Jason is his brother and no matter what that’s what he’ll always be.

Family is family, no matter what. It’s his one certainty. He will do anything to keep this family together. Anything.

Jason must be able to tell how far from fine Dick is, because he doesn’t make any more snarky comments. He just tugs him towards the couch, gets him to lie down, and then texts someone. He only stays until Tim scrambles downstairs. As soon as Tim is within eyesight Jason is gone, the only sign he was in the manor at all the half-eaten sandwich on the counter.

Tim doesn’t notice it, because he’s too busy muttering under his breath about needing stitches, and this could already be infected, and, hey Nightwing can you hear me?

The last bit makes him sluggishly nod, and Tim presses his lips together.

“Stay here,” he says, and Dick can’t imagine moving now. Everything is turning dark, and he lets go.

\---

He wakes up in his room, Damian sitting on a chair next to his bed. He’s slumped onto the mattress, and Dick can’t hide his smile. He looks younger that way, face no longer contorted into a perpetual scowl. Damian is a handful, and Dick wonders if he’s doing his pseudo parenting right. His own parents died when he was ten, and then the next closest thing he got was Batman and his British butler. Sometimes Catwoman, but she was more like an indulgent aunt. 

But they did a good job. They raised him, and he’s still here, and not crazy, and not some revenge-fueled killer on the streets of Gotham. He winces when a part of him whispers, you’re not Jason. Jason…was different. Clearly Bruce’s parenting style was not a template to be followed for all Robins.

He shakes himself out of his parenting crisis and notes the IV in his arm and bandages swathed around his middle. The bandaging is clearly Tim’s work, and he makes a mental note to thank the kid for stopping him from bleeding out in the manor’s kitchen.

Damian continues to sleep by him. He ruffles the kid’s hair. “Oh, prala,” he sighs.

Damian is instantly on high alert, hand heading to the knife he’s no doubt got somewhere on his person. He relaxes when Dick smiles at him, only to cross his arms and glare. Dick winces.

“You are not doing that again,” Damian says, with all the certainty of Batman. Dick lets his smile show and ruffles his hair again. Probably shouldn't have gotten so close to dying again, like opening a half-healed wound. They both know it’ll happen again, but for right now they can pretend that those words will be true.

Damian allows himself a small grin.

He doesn’t see Jason for two weeks afterwards, until they happen to attempt to take down the same smuggling ring in one of Gotham’s seedier shipyards. Actually, who is he kidding, they’re all pretty seedy.

He pretends not to notice Jason giving him a once-over, and instead grins at him when they’ve finished knocking out the last dealer and are waiting for Commissioner Gordon to show up. He would go in for a hug, but he’s ninety-five percent sure that will end with a knife in one of his extremities.

\---

Selena joins him as he jumps from roof to roof. She’s a natural acrobat, keeping pace with him with, well, cat-like grace. She had shaken her head when he’d been ‘revived’, in the long-suffering way that she had, before ruffling his hair for a half-second. She was never angry with him, and he thinks that’s because she understands, on some level. 

“What would the baby birds do without you,” she’d said that night. The words fill him with dread and fondness at the same time--yet another responsibility, another weight--but it was also family, and warmth and love. 

She chuckles as they finally land on the roof of their destination. Her gaze is piercing. 

“Seems like just yesterday you were just yay high,” she laughs, waving her hand by her hips, “calling me Aunty Catwoman, Aunty Selena.”

He smiles back at her, wondering what had prompted that memory to return. 

\----

The third time he wakes up that night from a nightmare of Luthor holding him up against the way, unable to move his body because of the restraints, he goes downstairs to get a drink of water and finds himself sitting at the dining table, watching the condensation drip down the glass. 

Tim finds him in the morning, half-asleep propped up on his elbow and sighs. He’s been doing a lot of that lately--Damian is giving the kid early gray hairs. Between the pre-pubescent Robin and Jason, Tim’s going to be fully gray by the time he turns twenty. 

Tim shuffles over, yawning, and takes the glass away, emptying it in the sink. He pours out a cup of milk instead, and stirs in some hot chocolate powder before sliding it in front of him and turning back to the kitchen cabinets to look for the toast. 

Dick takes a sip, feeling nostalgic for nights long gone by when the end of patrol meant having hot chocolate while Alfred stitched up him and Batman, and Bruce would warn him that he needed to wait for the drink to cool but he wouldn’t listen, burning his tongue on the scalding milk. Bruce would raise an eyebrow before laughing quietly, and that took some of the sting away.

Tim sits down across from him, having made his own breakfast. Dick tries to swipe a sip of his coffee, but Tim’s faster, snatching it out of his reach and downing half of it in one gulp. He slams the cup down a little harder than necessary and pins him with a glare.

“No. Coffee.” 

Dick supposes that’s fair, after he’d finished 5 cups of joe trying to stay awake in front of the BatComputer finishing up reports until Tim had come downstairs and found him practically vibrating over the keyboard and had dragged him to bed. Not that he’d been able to sleep, keyed up on caffeine.

Tim probably needs the coffee more than he does anyway.

They sit together in comfortable silence, and Dick feels more real than he has in weeks. 


	2. with my trowel, I shall dig the grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason and Dick have a very one-sided conversation. Dick forgets that sleep is an essential body function. Tim is a mind-reader. Damian is very much not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha remember when I said this would be updated every 4-5 days?

Nobody seems to really know what to do with him--he’s been gone long enough that the routines no longer include him, the muscle memory of his presence faded with time and grief. And yet now that he’s back it's hard to stretch them back out to provide him his place again. Tim forgets to assign him stakeouts once or twice, used to being a man short. Damian’s had to relearn how to fight with him, the two of them no longer the perfectly in sync duo they once were--though it doesn’t take long for them to fall back into the rhythms of each other’s movements and the easy stances. The person who has the least trouble returning to the way things were is in fact, Jason, which really says something about how heavy and how deep the rift between him and the rest of them had grown. 

Jason seems content to hate him from afar, switching from burning anger to calculated nonchalance at the drop of a hat. Which is no different from the way it used to be pre-Luthor induced semi-death and Spyral infiltration. If it weren’t for the fact that Tim had fumed at him for a half-hour and Damian kept leaving bruises in their practice sparring sessions he’d have thought Jason’s appearance at the manor had been a hallucination. 

(Who knows, maybe he’s still hallucinating now. Tripping on Joker’s fear gas while Bruce holds him close and he hugs back with all the strength a nine-year old can muster, red-yellow-green costume half-ripped and torn but more protective than any body armor he could ever wear.)

He finds himself seeking out Red Hood as often as he can, toeing the line of ‘how many times can he show up in Jason’s territory before he gets suspicious.’ He feels real there, in the hard lines of anger in Jason’s angry stance, in the bite of his words. 

He thinks Jason might be noticing though--Hood’s started looking more and more unsettled each time he shows up, body language betraying his uncertainty. He backs off a little, makes sure it seems like an accident when he fights back to back with him for the fourth time in three weeks.

Whenever he comes back from those patrols Tim raises an eyebrow before sighing and shaking his head, turning to look back at whatever’s got his attention on the monitors. Dick always ruffles his hair and slings an arm around his shoulders, and if Tim doesn’t push him away, bullies him into sleeping.

Tim calls him a hypocrite for this, but doesn’t directly call him out for not sleeping, looking too tired to push the point. 

Dick can’t help it. When he sleeps it feels like Luthor’s palm is over his mouth, thick fingers touching his cheek in a cruel parody of the way Bruce used to tilt his chin to look him in the eyes after a particularly rough patrol. He wakes up thinking he’ll find the curve of Helena’s body next to him, or Barbara’s, or maybe Tiger in the small hotel room the night before a mission. 

Everything is murky when he sleeps. He knows it's affecting his performance in the field, but no one’s called him out on it yet so he pretends everything is fine. (It seems like that’s all he’s been doing lately--switching one mask for another for another for another for another--)

(Sometimes it feels like the Nightwing mask is sewn onto his face, and if he tries to rip it off he’ll bleed. Whose face is under it, he wonders.)

It comes to a head when Jason saves him again. They’re running across the rooftops of Gotham, doing a regular bust, Tim having roped them into the mission and giving them intel that had Oracle written all over it. 

The jump to the next rooftop is too much, so mid-run he pulls out the grappling hook and fires it, letting it take his weight. The line goes taught.

Then it goes slack again, the concrete under the hook crumbling a little, because God forbid Gotham have proper infrastructure. He’s falling suddenly, the ground rushing up to meet him. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem--it’s happened many times before. 

Just reshoot the hook and continue. Only he finds himself blinking as the pavement rushes to meet him, his fingers failing him in the split second where he needs to launch the hook and catch himself. The fatigue runs through his bones, through his veins, and his mind goes blank. Nothing registers, just the wind whistling in his ears as he goes to join his parents.

And then he’ll be free? No more uncertainty, he’ll die as Nightwing and stay that way? He’ll stop dreaming of Luthor and expecting Tiger to be beside him and looking for Helena in his bed? He’ll be himself?

And then there’s a sudden jerk as he stops falling. He looks up as he dangles off the side of the building, something like surprise and dread bubbling inside him. Jason had caught the hook, and is straining to hold the rope. He pulls the rope, and Dick rises a few inches, shaking him out of his reverie enough for him to swing and tumble through an open window. He sits up against the wall, willing his breath to slow down.

He takes a look around the building’s interior, a dilapidated old office building with the gutted remains of several chairs and tables, smelling of concrete and rat poison. Jason thunders in after him, stopping when he finds him leaning against the wall. 

He lets the back of his head fall against the concrete wall, closing his eyes and suddenly realizing how close he’d come to following his parent’s legacy.

(Blood on the circus grounds, orphans on the streets, silent-as-the-grave Gotham nights.)

He can hear the sound of Jason’s heavy breathing for a couple of seconds, the shifting of his feet on the rough torn up flooring. He tilts his head up, cracking an eye open, watching his brother.

Slowly, Jason takes his helmet off, so that every bit of anger is visible on his face. He tosses the helmet aside before moving fast and pining Dick to the wall, holding him by the costume and pushing him against the rough concrete till he almost can’t breathe.

He can feel Jason’s hot breath on the parts of his face that the domino mask doesn’t cover. 

“What the fuck was that? Is this a game to you, Goldie? Some kind of a joke?” He shakes Dick once, as if to emphasize the point or to knock some sense into his head.

“The fuck is wrong with you,” he swears, incredulity seeping into this voice. “You were about to become fucking roadkill back there if I hadn’t grabbed you in time.”

Dick just continues struggling to breath, letting his head rest against the wall again. The two of them just stop for a second, the only sound the heavy breathing.

Jason drops him after the silence becomes deafening, turning away as if disgusted by the sight of him. 

“Well, Big Bird? Gonna say anything?” Dick opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. “Fucking thought so. How sad are you, Batman’s pride and joy.”

If Dick could feel anything beyond the dull ache in his chest he thinks he’d be angry at those words, but at the moment he can’t summon anything besides a weak “Jay.”

Jason turns back around at the call, walking back towards him and kneeling down so they’re eye-level. He tilts Dick’s chin up roughly. “Talk.”

“Nothing to say. Jus’ tired.”

“Fuck you, I’m not dealing with your stubborn ass. What. Happened.”

He shrugs. “Fell.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Like I said, ‘m tired. Haven’t been sleeping.”

“What’s keeping you up at night, Golden Boy? You followed Bat’s mission, you came back in one piece, congratulations. Didn’t even get a scar. What’s eating you up at night, huh, Mr. Perfect?”

Dick can’t help it. He snorts. Jason’s grip on his chin becomes tighter and he jerks him forward.

“You already caused enough shit by dying one time around, and it wasn’t even real. If you don’t want to be a fucking inconvienience, tell me what’s going on.”

“Was real.” It slips out of him by accident, barely above a whisper. 

Jason gets even angrier, which he didn’t know was possible. He lets go of his chin to loom over Nightwing.

“Listen, bastard, you think you know about  _ dying--” _

And Dick presses his palms into his eye sockets and fails to control his breath. He comes back to himself what feels like hours later, Jason’s hand encircling his wrist and holding his hand up to his pulse.

“--So just fucking breathe,” he’s saying, “look at all this fucking air. Come on, that’s it.”

The whole story spills out of him, heartbeats and heavy palms and manacles, deception and false funerals. Jason’s anger deflates, before returning for a second. 

“Always knew Luthor was a piece of shit,” he says, almost philosophically. Then, “And you didn’t think to tell this to anyone? Not even demon-brat?”

He shakes his head. Jason barks out a bitter laugh, before sighing. He puts his hands on Dick’s shoulders, as if holding him in place.

“Go home, Grayson,” he says. “Let them help you figure out your shit. I’m not going on a mission with you until you get your head screwed on straight.”

Then he pulls away, putting his helmet back on and half-climbs out the window before turning back and saying “You’re here, you know. Right here right now. Nightwing. So stop acting as if Spryal’s got a noose around your neck.” And then he’s gone, out into the night.

Dick manages to get home in a half-haze, slowly making his way across town and avoiding any crazy stunts. 

Apparently Jason had called ahead and given Tim and Damian an abridged version of what happened, because when Dick returns home, mindlessly walking through the Batcave and stripping out of his suit, they’re waiting for him, arms crossed. (They’re really picking up Bruce’s habits, huh.) Damian silently helps him out of the suit and into a t-shirt and sweatpants. He gives Dick a once-over, before darting forward and squeezing him in a quick hug, arms around his middle for a half-second and gone just as fast. He wonders how much Jason told them. He asks the question out loud, and Tim answers.

“Not much,” the kid says, sounding tired. “Just that you nearly got yourself killed--” the  _ again  _ hangs in the air, unspoken, “--and that Luthor, uh. He. You know.” Dick does, in fact, know. 

He rubs at his face tiredly. “Didn’t want you to find out,” he manages.

Damian bristles. “You are an imbecile,” he says, but it lacks the usual bite. 

He nods, willing Tim to recognize that all he wants to do is go upstairs into his bedroom and sleep for the next year and not talk about whatever just happened. Tim must be a mind reader, because he pulls Damian back when he opens his mouth, presumably to ask about Luthor, and says, “Good night. We’ll talk in the morning.” Damian closes his mouth and looks angry for a second, before it melts out of his features and into something that resembles worry.

He smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes and pats Damian on the shoulder gently, before heading to his room and collapsing into the sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know what y'all think of my take on Jason, is he edgy enough, Tim best boy 2k20

**Author's Note:**

> please bother me on tumblr i have the same username!
> 
> as always comments are very very much appreciated
> 
> will try to update every 4-5 days :)


End file.
